Even when Darren Jordan Cunningham was just a kid, DAZ or DAZ AUTOMATIC, growing up in Wolverhampton, there was something about him that stood out. “When I was at school, I was always being creative,” he remembers. “I was a very good counterfeiter – good at copying pictures. I was able to perfectly recreate pictures. At school, you’d have projects for the term and we were looking at Sikhism. I think I was about seven. I was asked to create this massive mural of Guru Nanak using different forms – using sequences, dipped painted cotton wool, Sikh fabrics.” He pauses as he thinks it through. “I ended up applying that to music. I create sketches, essentially like these fabrics, and I collage them together…once I see the picture it’s embellished further and the process repeats.”

If his first obsession was drawing, his first love was football. Indeed, if it wasn’t for a career-ending injury while a promising young player with West Bromwich Albion, football may well have remained his abiding obsession. Luckily for music, the injury caused a sudden change in direction. “I got some turntables and taught myself how to DJ, built up a small record collection and then started to DJ at student house parties in Wolverhampton.”

A devotee of Detroit techno and particularly, Derrick May, Carl Craig and Kevin Saunderson, Cunningham had no real sense how far outside the mainstream he stood. Luckily he met Matthew Parsons, who not only knew what he was playing but had a basic studio set up in his student digs. ‘Creating music was a bit of a black art,’ Cunningham remembers. “There was a curtain and I couldn’t see how it was made on the other side.” Parsons not only let him in and showed him the basics, when he went traveling he sold him all his kit for 200 quid.

Soon after, Darren moved to London. The PFA (Professional Footballers Association) was running a grant program for young players whose careers had been finished by injury and as a result, they funded his place on one of the first degree courses in Recording Arts. Which was when the partying started. “I was clean living before this point. Total fitness. I had periods where I didn’t make music at all as I didn’t have the money. I ended up buying synthesizers instead of paying tuition fees.” The result of this was a complete submersion in the dance subcultures of the capital city as well as a crash course in production. “I just got stuck in, from a practical, experimental viewpoint. Never used a metronome. That’s how my style developed.”

The result of all this wasn’t just the birth of Actress but of Werkdiscs, originally a club night with some friends, which became a label in time for the first Actress release in 2004. The label went on to discover and release some of the most widely talked-about artists of the emerging bass generation, namely Lukid, Disrupt and Zomby. As well as running the label, Actress remixed Various Productions, wrote for the seminal techno imprint Soma Records, put out singles and EPs through Prime Numbers and Nonplus and released the ‘Splazsh’ and 'R.I.P’ albums on Honest Jons, the British independent record label jointly created and founded by Damon Albarn. He also traveled with Albarn to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to record ‘Kinshasa One Two,’ which was released by Warp in 2011.

One of the preeminent and most singular voices in UK electronic music, since 2012 he has run his label in conjunction with Ninja Tune, releasing ‘Ghettoville’ in 2014, a record described as “inscrutable, unsettling and utterly unique” (Uncut). An epilogue poem written for the press release to Ghettoville led people to believe that Cunningham had retired. This, in turn, led him to conceptualize his new work as ‘Giving power back to identity.’ This fourth album was not just a poetic take on British youth in an electronic age, it also managed to catch the imagination of retail charting at number 20 on ‘Top Dance/Electronic Albums’ on the Billboard Charts.

Now he returns with a new album and a new music system – “AZD” (pronounced “Azid”). An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in “AZD” he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it.

In addition to his recorded work, Actress has been photographed by Wolfgang Tillmans and the late celebrated photographer Lord Snowden. He has worked collaboratively on projects with White Cube artist Eddie Peake, Mehdi Lacoste, Dan Emmerson and Belgian visual artist Pierre Debusschere, as well as fronting campaigns for Fashion brands Acne and Cav Empt, during which he has performed sell-out shows at The Barbican Center and Tate Modern London, Sonar Tokyo and Berghain Berlin.

In 2017 Actress release his fifth studio album AZD to much acclaim. Leading commentators on electronic music praised it and retail lapped it up, entering the UK Album charts at #45 and reaching #3 in UK Electronic iTunes Album Chart, #5 in US Electronic iTunes Album Chart and #6 in German Electronic iTunes Album Chart. Reviews for “AZD” were startling, with electronic ambassadors Resident Advisor leading the charge saying “Cunningham can once again produce a mirage-like moment of beauty like nobody else”.

Later that year Darren Cunningham was invited by the British Arts Council to reimagine the work of Steve Reich’s work Different Trains 47, to mark the anniversary of Indian Independence. This was not the first or last time Darren Cunningham would work in contemporary or classical music, or under auspices direction of Governing arts bodies of his native England. The British Council, The Barbican Centre, The BBC Proms and Boiler Room have all commissioned Actress to work on Neo-Classical music with the London Contemporary Orchestra. These recordings were later released as an album titled LAGEOS and released internationally and earning critical acclaim from The Guardian newspaper (8/10) and the Observer (4/5) amongst others.

Over the years Darren Cunningham has performed as Actress all over the world, both live and as a DJ. Highlights include appearances at MUTEK Mexico, Maratón Acústica y Electrónica, Moogfest, III Points, Sled Festival, BLOC Weekend, Futuresonic, Mutek Canada, Berlin Atonal, Club To Club, Adelaide Festival, Lente Kabinet Festival, Sonar Sound Tokyo, CTM Festival, Spring Attitude, Electronic Beats Festival, Lattexplus Festival and Magnetic Fields amongst many others.

Having more recently moved into songwriting and production he collaborated with American artists John Cale on his new solo record and live shows.

In October 2018 Darren Cunningham launched the label Werk__Ltd, a 2ndGen record label designed specifically to release music created by Artificial Intelligence. The first release was a mini-album by the Ai sprite Young Paint (aka Jade Soulform aka Francis aka Generation 4 aka AZD), a Learning Program that has been progressively emulating the Greyscale to Silvertone process Darren J. Cunningham started during the recording of the Hazyville LP on Werkdiscs in 2008. The EP was critically acclaimed from Resident Advisor (4/5) to Wire Magazine.

Moving into 2019 and through 2020 Actress and the Young Paint AI will work with festivals and institutions on commissions. Together they will analyze the work of existing composers and reimagine them as written and recorded compositions, as well as bespoke live performances.

The first commission for Actress + Young Paint was for CTM and Transmediale festival 2019 at the House of World Cultures, Berlin. Both Actress + Young Paint created and performed 72 minutes of music over two nights for an audience of 2000 people.

The second commission has come from The Holland Festival in Amsterdam and The Southbank Centre in London. In this new composition for Choir, AI, Piano and electronics Actress presents a reimagining of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Welt-Parlament (1995) – the first part of his epic opera cycle Licht (‘Light’). In the original members of a fictional parliament in the sky discuss the meaning of love. This time politicians are in the cloud: The Sin {x} II one-off live performance utilizes recordings of actual debates on the subject of love by members of the UK and Netherlands Parliament. Joined on stage by celebrated Italian pianist, and student of Stockhausen, Vanessa Benelli Mosell, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, and conductor Robert Ames, co-founder of London Contemporary Orchestra. Actress and the Young Paint AI will manipulate these recordings live through synthesis and electronics to accompany the Choral and Piano performance and delivering a multidisciplinary meditation on the transcendent property of love in a world striving to assert borders.

The premiere of Actress x Stockhausen Sin {x} II’ will be at The Southbank Centre on May 14th, 2019 and then moving to Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam on June 14th for The Holland Festival.